Unions using new tactics with parts suppliers

Job security, pensions increasingly at risk in current climate

By Danielle Harder

01/29/2010|hrreporter.com|Last Updated: 03/08/2010

Securing the future of workers in the auto parts manufacturing industry is getting decidedly more complicated, according to Rick Laporte, CAW Local 444 president in Windsor, Ontario, and it is changing the union’s approach to collective bargaining.

Take, for example, the last agreement the union negotiated for workers at Johnson Controls Inc. in nearby Lakeshore. As a final touch, Laporte asked Chrysler Corp. for a letter promising to hire the Johnson Control workers should the company lose its contract with the auto maker. Three months later, that very thing happened when Chrysler announced it would now get its overhead components, or headliners, from a company in Michigan.